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| April 22, 2005 | ||
| No Escape From the Bots A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION I’ve been looking for a place with no Republicans. And I think: There can’t be any here. There are howler monkeys, whose eerie howls at dusk reverberate through the jungle. There are Mack trucks that rumble on the dirt road, sending clouds of dust into the sky. There are school children playing soccer into the night – under new field lights unimaginable here just a few years ago. I live in a tiny village in Costa Rica called Nosara. After selling my soul to the Kerry Campaign, knocking on doors for six months in Florida last year – I’m on the run. Maybe in Costa Rica, a country with universal health care and no military, I’ll be safe. I try to ignore everything outside Costa Rica. I only vaguely know that Condoleeza Rice is Secretary of State. There’s been a tsunami in Asia. There’s some lady named Terri Schiavo. The Pope died and the new Pope is psycho. I’ve heard these things somewhere, but they don’t mean anything to me. No TV. No Radio. No Newspapers. No Fox News. No Clear Channel. No New York Post. The last people I want to see or hear are Republicans – I need to look out for my mental health. I start in the capital city of San José, a traffic-choked Latin American metropolis with legalized prostitution – not a place you expect to find those beacons of Middle American moral values. But you will of course find McDonald’s, Taco Bell and even TGI Fridays and Tony Roma’s. At a café outside the National Theater there’s a group of married men in their fifties from the Red State of Arizona. I can’t help but overhear them – because wherever you go the English language is as inescapable as fast food. They’re ranting and raving about the evils of the "Liberal Media" in the same breath that they discuss the hot places to find the youngest-looking Costa Rican hookers. "I saw one in Jacó Beach that looked about 14!" One says excitedly. They are sex tourists. They’re also Republicans. I take a six hour bus to Nosara, which is bustling with real estate developers, cutting down jungle and building ocean-view mansions with swimming pools. It’s the dry season. There’s no water in the entire Guanacaste region, but they keep building swimming pools anyway. I hear them in Toucan Restaurant, eating cheeseburgers and drinking Imperial beer at high-season tourist prices, saying that there’s no such thing as global warming. They are New Millennium American colonists. And, yep, they are Republicans, too. "Enjoy your appetizers," the house musician says. His guitar is totally out of tune. He rode two hours in the bus to get here for this gig. He’s getting 2000 Colones a night – less than five American dollars. A random gringo gives me a ride home on his four-wheeler. He looks like The Dude from The Big Lebowski and drives like a lunatic, hopping potholes and squeezing between villagers on bicycles. He curses like a Hollywood agent and he’s smoking a joint. But when I mention I worked for Kerry he stops his vehicle. "You can walk then, son," he says. "I love Bush." Is there any escape? I retreat to my bungalow and don’t go outside for days, sleeping on a bare mattress, on the top floor, with the windows drawn. Now it’s just me and my laptop. I’m trying to write haikus. Iambic pentameter. Anything to get my mind off of Republicans. Suddenly the tiny bars in the bottom right had corner of my screen turn yellow. It’s a wireless internet connection. HERE? I click Internet Explorer and there I am on Yahoo.com. The popup ad tells me where I can find Hot Christian Singles just like me. I sign up for Yahoo messenger. I choose the name ChrisPuraVida. "Pura Vida" is to Costa Rica as "No Problem, Mon!" is to Jamaica. It means "Pure Life" and it’s an expression you hear everywhere. If only there was Pura Vida here. I enter the room: New York 43. My home town. Suddenly chimes explode like a cyber church – the first noise I’ve heard in a long time, other than the howler monkeys. It’s the first human contact I’ve had in days. Not only that, it’s a female.
I feel like I should respond.
Wait a minute. She isn’t a real girl at all. She’s not even a human being. She’s a computerized program that pretends to be a sexy woman to lure you to a pay-per-view porn site. She’s a preprogrammed cyber robot – called a "Bot." I put Maya Throater on 'ignore' but another one pops up. Then they start coming by the hundreds. Suddenly I’m inundated with porn bots. I run into the room: PoliticalLobby 9. Harmless enough. Surely there’ll be real people in here – and a politics is a topic that I know a little more about. Here’s an actual transcript of my conversation:
And I wonder: are any of these real people? Or are all they all bots? Sure, some are there to sell me porn. But worse, others are selling me the Republican way of thinking. Like the bots, they repeat the same phrases over and over again. Copied and pasted. It reminds me of Bush during the debates with Kerry or one of his fake Town Hall Meetings: taking a scripted question from a handpicked plant in the audience. Then he says the same thing over and over again – anything to sell that Social Security scam. Like the bots, Republicans stick to the same strategy. For bots, it’s pretend to be a horny girl. For Republicans, it’s anyone that disagrees with them is evil and hates America. The Republican Bots have taken over America – forget that – the world. Even here in Costa Rica there is no escape. A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION Chris Goldberg is a freelance writer based in New York and Costa Rica. You can contact him at ChrisGoldCR@hotmail.com. | ||
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